Abstract
The purpose of this article is to present and discuss findings of a survey research related to who the students entering nursing education are and what beliefs they have of nursing education and nursing as a profession. After 6 months of nurses' training at a Norwegian college in 1998/99, a class of students completed a questionnaire with closed and open questions addressing educational and occupational choice and conceptions of the education and the occupational practice. The response rate was 80% (N=315). In accordance to recent international research the findings of this study strengthen the tendencies that nursing students form a very heterogeneous group, as only 55% of the selection answer that they wanted to study nursing. The frequency distribution showed that 20% of the students expected nursing education would give them more practice and less theory. Regarding the open question addressing what beliefs they had about the nursing profession, 52% of the students answered «human contact/care» whilst 30% answered «did not know», «did not think about it». Factor analysis resulted in three factors. The first factor can be interpreted as a communication factor. The second can be understood as a clever and practical factor and the third one can be interpreted as a caring factor.